1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the technology surrounding the design and manufacture of wooden baseball bats such as ash bats and, more particularly, to an improved baseball bat construction which takes advantage of a solid maple composition and which is particularly suited for professional level game play.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Baseball bats, particularly those constructed of wood, are well known in the art. The most well known of wooden bats is the traditional ash bat which exhibits a fairly straight wooden grain surface and is found to be consistently in the range of 60 percent specific gravity. Such bats are very well known in the art, however their drawback is that they are very prone to chipping, denting or outright breaking during game play. Also, even if the traditional ash bat survives catastrophic failure upon contacting a pitched ball, the hitting surface of the barrel will quickly erode due to the repeated contact with the ball. Baseball players, particularly professionals, have adopted the practice of taping the barrel of ash bats in batting practice to prolong their usefulness by reducing the aforementioned surface deterioration, this being an undesirable necessity in prolonging the life of ash bats.
As a result of this weakness, the typical professional hitter will go through an average of 73 ash bats during a typical major league baseball season of 162 games. Further, the lower grades of wood, such as ash, which are utilized in such bats are generally not as resilient as in higher grades of wood, resulting in a ball not traveling as far once it has been hit with a specified degree of force and speed. U.S. Pat. No. 3,433,481, issued to Tanguay et al., is directed to reinforced baseball bat wrappings and indicates, at column 1, lines 35-45, that wrappings have been attempted in the art for such things as maple and mahogany bat designs. However, Tanguay further states that such maple or mahogany bat designs, up to that point in time, would not be economically practicable due to their incidence of breakage and it is further known that reinforcing baseball bat wrappings and the like are not permitted for use in professional and instructional hitting game play. It is was also well known in the earlier art that such bat compositions as mahogany and maple were at that time unsuitable owing to the denser natures of such woods and the relatively primitive nature of earlier processes of manufacture which could not overcome such problems as weight, brittleness and curly grainings which made manufacture of such bats for the purpose of game play and instructional hitting nearly impossible. Die cast aluminum and magnesium alloy bats are also known in the art, however such metal bats are not authorized for professional league play. Accordingly there is still a need in the art for a durable wooden bat construction with performance characteristics superior to that of ash such as durability and longevity.